\n<\/p>\n
At a press conference today, President Donald Trump dispensed one clear piece of medical advice to American parents in a rambling, repetitive monologue: Don\u2019t. Take. Tylenol. He told pregnant women that they could help keep their children safe from autism by not taking the drug whenever they could avoid it (\u201cfight like hell,\u201d he instructed). He advised parents not to give Tylenol to their young children. He denounced giving the hepatitis B vaccine to infants and suggested that parents space out their children\u2019s immunization schedule. (\u201cThey pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it\u2019s a disgrace,\u201d he said.) He declared that children ideally should be given the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines separately, though such individual shots are not available in the United States. \u201cThis is based on what I feel,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n
Trump had been hinting at his big announcement for weeks, and it was evident that he wasn\u2019t interested in making sure the contents had passed through the normal research process. \u201cI don\u2019t want to wait any longer. We don\u2019t need anything more. And if it\u2019s wrong\u2014it\u2019s not going to be wrong, but\u2014if it is wrong, it\u2019s fine. We have to do it,\u201d Trump told the audience at a dinner for the American Cornerstone Institute on Saturday. Today, instead of opting for measured guidance, or urging additional research, Trump borrowed a strategy from his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: pushing ahead with a sensational conclusion based on a handful of disputed studies.<\/p>\n
Researchers have been studying possible causes of autism for decades, and they generally dismiss singling out one culprit like a drug or a vaccine ingredient. (Instead, the consensus is that genetics play a large role, along with an array of environmental factors.) Some studies have found a possible association between acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental disorders. In 2015, the FDA issued a notice about a possible link between prenatal Tylenol use and ADHD, though it also mentioned that the cited studies had design flaws. Last month, Andrea Baccarelli, the dean of Harvard\u2019s school of public health, published a review of other studies in which he and his co-authors concluded that acetaminophen use during pregnancy is associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, and that pregnant women should be advised to limit their use of the drug. (Baccarelli was invited to appear at today\u2019s announcement but did not attend, a Harvard spokesperson told me. In a statement sent to reporters shortly before the White House announcement, he wrote that his August review suggests the \u201cpossibility of a causal relationship\u201d between Tylenol and autism, but also noted that acetaminophen is \u201can important tool for pregnant patients and their physicians.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Two recent large studies, meanwhile, challenge any connection at all. A Swedish study, published last year, analyzed the health records of more than 2 million children and found that acetaminophen use was not associated with autism. A study of more than 200,000 Japanese children, published earlier this month, likewise didn\u2019t find any meaningful association. That paper suggested that links in other studies could be explained, at least in part, by \u201cmisclassification and other biases.\u201d A spokesperson for Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol, told me in an email, \u201cWe believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with any suggestion otherwise and are deeply concerned about the health risks and confusion this poses for expecting mothers and parents.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of that nuance was aired during the announcement. Instead Trump professed to feel \u201cvery certain\u201d about the Tylenol theory, and repeatedly warned Americans off the drug. This is not how science\u2014or public health\u2014normally works. The president of the United States doesn\u2019t tease that he\u2019s figured out the cause of a disorder before the research has been done to support that conclusion. Nor does he warn the American people against a common medication or the childhood-vaccine schedule without detailed evidence of his reasoning, or the full support of his staff. \u201cIt may be stronger from me than from the group,\u201d he said in his speech, referring to Kennedy, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, and Mehmet Oz, his head of Medicare and Medicaid. \u201cThey are waiting for certain studies. I don\u2019t\u2014I just want to say it like it is.\u201d (Trump\u2019s spokesperson, Kush Desai, wrote in an email that \u201cthe Trump Administration does not believe popping more pills is always the answer for better health\u201d and that \u201cthere is mounting evidence finding a connection between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism.\u201d The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n
Trump also went further than his deputies in calling out even fringier theories of autism. Of all the speakers at the White House today, Trump was the most explicit in blaming vaccines for poor health outcomes\u2014a notion that has been repeatedly debunked\u2014and he did so at length, at one point going on an extended tangent about a worker at Trump Tower whose son was supposedly \u201cfried\u201d by a fever following a childhood immunization. As I reported earlier this month, Kennedy has been in regular contact with a former Duke University researcher, William Parker, who believes that Tylenol given to young children is mostly responsible for autism. (Parker\u2019s theory is such an outlier that none of the autism researchers I spoke with had heard of it, or him.) Today, Kennedy, Bhattacharya, Makary, and Oz didn\u2019t bring up Parker\u2019s theory, though Trump seemed to endorse it. \u201cDon\u2019t have your baby take Tylenol,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Ever since Trump announced that his administration would find the cause of autism within months, researchers have feared that the team would jump to unsupported conclusions. But Trump hardly seems to care if he\u2019s wrong. Besides, he repeatedly insisted, eschewing Tylenol during pregnancy has \u201cno downside.\u201d (Tylenol is considered the safest fever reducer available for pregnant women.)<\/p>\n
During today\u2019s announcement, Kennedy at least acknowledged the trade-offs inherent in scaring pregnant Americans off Tylenol, and allowed that, sometimes, using it is unavoidable. \u201cThe FDA also recognizes that acetaminophen is often the only tool for fevers and pain in pregnancy, as other alternatives have well-documented adverse effects,\u201d Kennedy noted in his remarks. \u201cHHS wants therefore to encourage clinicians to exercise their best judgment in the use of acetaminophen for fevers and pain in pregnancy by prescribing the lowest effective dose and shortest necessary duration, and only when treatment is required.\u201d (Today, the FDA posted an even more measured notice to physicians, signed by Makary, that underscored a possible association between acetaminophen and autism is \u201can ongoing area of scientific debate.\u201d) Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly instructed pregnant women to \u201ctough it out.\u201d Sowing doubts regarding vaccines, going all in on fringe theories, and opting for extreme positions instead of embracing nuance: At MAHA\u2019s big reveal, Trump seemed determined to steal Kennedy\u2019s spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At a press conference today, President Donald Trump dispensed one clear piece of medical advice to American parents in a rambling, repetitive monologue: Don\u2019t. Take. Tylenol. He told pregnant women that they could help keep their children safe from autism by not taking the drug whenever they could avoid it (\u201cfight like hell,\u201d he instructed).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[2171,1024,11531,272,81,14126,418],"class_list":{"0":"post-23262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-fight","9":"tag-hell","10":"tag-pregnant","11":"tag-tells","12":"tag-trump","13":"tag-tylenol","14":"tag-women"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}